


Boucherie

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Ya'aburnee [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Bad Psychiatry, Body Worship, Dismemberment, Gaslighting, Gore, M/M, Manipulation, Oral Sex, Rimming, Rough Sex, Teasing, intent to cannibalize, trigger warning: autopsies, trigger warning: graphic dissection, unexpected irrational and unwarranted fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:11:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s not often one has the opportunity to watch someone so entirely in their element, to see their masks fall aside and watch them become transparently themselves in an open willingness to share their passions. It’s especially uncommon for those passions to involve easing rigor out of the limbs of a deceased former patient.</i>
</p><p>The Cajun word <b>Boucherie</b> refers to the communal slaughtering of animals with contribution from each family, such as in processing of the meat.</p><p>Set 4 weeks after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1584095">Ouroboros</a>, in line with canon and the Randall Tier storyline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We have decided this particular canon-parallel universe needs more development.
> 
>  ~~Un~~ fortunately for you, we write like machines.

Will is surprised by how soft the sweater feels - each scarlet fiber drawn long beneath his fingers. Laid out neatly atop the change of clothes provided to him, he moves it aside in favor of pulling on the plain white undershirt instead, hair sticking damp to his face.

Everything’s in high contrast - the lights are too bright through the steam of the shower that was too hot against his skin. Even the carpet feels too plush beneath his bare feet as he steps into the pants Hannibal has left for him and looks away from the mirror, knowing that image too would appear in too stark of a reality for him to grapple with just yet.

He follows the sound of cellos singing soft through the hallway from the bathroom, towards the kitchen where they play over hidden speakers, clutching his stained clothes in a snow-sodden lump.

“I don’t know what to do with these,” he says, rounding the corner.

Hannibal meets his eyes for just long enough to know Will’s overwhelmed, that the shower hadn’t helped beyond taking away the shaking due explicitly to the cold. He doesn’t let his eyes linger on the shirt and pants that sit just a little loose on Will’s frame, but he gives his red knuckles a lingering gaze before turning away.

He folds the towel in his hands precisely in three, sets it on the counter.

“We’ll have them laundered.” he says, stepping close enough to Will to take the clothes from him, feeling how his hands have absorbed the cold from them again, hadn’t retained the heat of the water instead.

Nerves, this cooling of extremities. Hannibal sighs, allows Will to withdraw his hands for the moment.

He presses a warm palm to Will’s shoulder as he passes him, a silent request to stay, as he himself makes his way to the laundry to set the clothes away. His coat he’ll have pressed, but that can wait.

When he returns, he doesn’t stay at Will’s back, gives him the space to adjust, watches how he doesn’t.

“You should be pleased,” he tells him, waiting for Will to look up, adding softly when he doesn’t: “I am.”

Will lets himself lean against the counter. His pupils are still wide, although his breath is even, pulse slowed to carry the lingering metallic bitterness of adrenaline in steady pulses through his limbs - the profound stillness that settles after an explosion.

He lifts his hand, a muscle twitching in his cheek when he flexes his fingers into a fist. Already swelling with the shadowy traces of fresh bruises, he extends them again and breathes through his nose as the new scabs crack with the movement.

“I thought it would be harder,” Will observes, a note of surprise.

Hannibal refrains from reminding Will that he has the capacity for emptiness.

“The nature of instinct is such that it is always easy.” he notes, instead, “A part of our brain we have no control over takes up the command for a while. Strength, wrath, desire,” his lips work very briefly. He sets his eyes on the blood starting to ooze from Will’s knuckles again, meditates on it.

“No guilt, no regret.” he adds, voice vague and soft.

He turns to take a soft cloth from one of the drawers under the main kitchen island and wets it under the tap. When he reaches to take Will’s hand, the other trembles.

“Stay here, Will,” Hannibal murmurs, drawing his hand up to examine it before dabbing it clean, “Don’t let that pendulum swing, stay with this.”

Will forces a hard breath through his nose, watching the bloom of pale pink across the clean white towel.

“I’m here,” responds Will, “with you.”

Swallowing hard, jaw working, he withdraws his hand from Hannibal, flexing it again without thinking, to feel the way his bones shift against each other, the way his skin pulls tight over them, fat with bruising.

“There’s blood,” Will says, his voice even and practiced, words he’s said a thousand times before, playing back each spray and drip and pool his bare hands drew from that boy’s face. “I didn’t clean it up before I left. Too hurried to think clearly,” he breathes soft, watching his hand, observing his own design as it replays through him like those of so many others. “It will have soaked through the carpet, now, into the floorboards. They’ll wonder where h-” a pause, sudden, “where I went, to leave it for so long.”

For a moment, a brief moment, Hannibal allows himself to feel disappointed. He had hoped -

Regardless, it passes. He steps close enough to Will to feel his quick breath and tilts his chin up gently with the side of his finger.

“No one knows.” he reminds Will softly, tone turning just the hint of sternness under the words to bring Will’s attention about, “Time is something you do have, Will. Do not fear it. Remember where you went when you allowed instinct to absorb you.”

He watches Will’s eyes flick between his own before they briefly turn glassy. Then he blinks. He’s aware - for the moment, present.

“For now,” he adds after a moment, stroking his knuckles down Will’s neck and tracing the collar of the undershirt gently before dropping his hand away, “You will help me.”

Will allows himself to ease, just so, beneath the familiar touch. Like dimming the lights, he quiets the cacophony inside his head that wants to make him see - see what he did, how he did it, and what he left behind, to see this as he would see any other memory stained black and dripping.

He quiets them all and focuses on Hannibal, as if in a fever dream. A slick line trails wet between his fingers and he lifts his hand again, holding it towards Hannibal as though it were an offering.

Even the soft cloth feels sharp against his skin and he lowers his head to hide a flinch, attentive and quiet, as the aftershock passes.

This time, he allows the gentle and careful cleaning to be done properly, until no more blood oozes from the cracks in his skin. He lets out a slow breath when Hannibal presses his lips to the sensitive fingers, chaste and dry.

Hannibal walks around him again, setting the cloth under the steady white stream of water from the tap and rinsing it until it no longer drips pink. He’ll need to wash it properly, but that, too can come later. For the moment he folds his fingers around it and leans against the counter lightly to watch Will.

“Randall Tier is yours, Will,” he reminds him, “Your victory. You brought him to me. It is in your hands what we do.”

He allows Will a moment to absorb the information before nodding once, to himself, and taking the cloth with him as he steps around Will and into the corridor leading through the main house. He doesn’t slow his pace, but his shoulders relax significantly when he hears Will follow.

His basement is divided, segments dedicated to cooling the wine he doesn’t store in the kitchen, his collection and those that simply need darkness in order to mature. Others hold pristine metal fridges, much like the one in his kitchen upstairs. He passes everything, and goes further still, turning on the light appropriately when he arrives at the very back, where on the high metal table, lies the prone nude form of the man who once thought himself a beast.

Will keeps his gaze low, to maintain himself with steady breaths and even steps, following in Hannibal’s wake, beyond the stainless steel refrigerators and climate-controlled bottle storage.

He lifts his eyes when the light turns on and feels more at ease seeing the body in front of him than letting his mind runs circles around the alarming array of tools large and small that Hannibal has collected here. A machine shop that’s never touched metal, glints of cold steel tempting him to look. Tempting him to imagine.

Will wonders which of his friends were quartered into parts where he stands now.

Wonders how they looked laid out on the cold table in front of him.

And for a moment, he considers the possibility that some part of them is still here.

In stark silence, his jaw tightens and works.

Until finally, he steps forward, approaching the greying remains, the boy’s eyes sunken and staring dull as beach glass into the darkness above. He looks smaller than Will remembers, with the life that roared and snarled and growled released from inside him, so far removed from the creature that tried to tear his throat out.

He wonders if the tables were turned - if Randall had succeeded in what Hannibal sent him to do - if the boy would be standing here instead. Scenting the air. Baring his teeth.

“You washed him off already,” Will notes, to break the silence.

Hannibal doesn’t reply, just watches Will take in the space, flex and stand within it, deciding if he wants to open himself here as well. The hesitation is clear, but there is something else there; something close to wonder if Will wasn’t so exhausted.

His mind is closing up again, going somewhere it knows it will be safe - where Hannibal can’t follow him.

Yet he has to wonder just how far into Will’s mind the thought of him rests and how wide his influence stretches, like cracks in dry soil.

He steps aside as Will steps closer still, gives him the space he needs to see the man he’s taken life from. This with his hands, where his last had been with a gun. This was different. This had been a duel.

One held his mask of teeth and blood, was known, was seen, was nothing more than a charade in shadows. Proclaimed himself as a monster. The one of that true nature stands here now, hands hovering just over the cold steel but never touching, having tamed him to his hand.

 _Monsters cannot be announced_ , Hannibal thinks, _without immediately turning the monsters into pets._

Hannibal steps close enough to trail a finger against the back of Will’s neck to the top-most point of his spine, enough for Will to shiver, to return to him here.

“You unmasked him when you brought him to me.” he murmurs, head ducked to breathe the words against Will’s skin, “So I presented him bare.”

Goosebumps prickle along his arms and he unconsciously leans into the breath, just enough that his shoulders support him against Hannibal’s chest for an instant before he moves forward again, away from him, to the side of the table.

As if in apology, he runs the back of his hand - the same hand bearing fresh the signs of destruction - against the boy’s pallid skin, color settling out of it, muscles tightening as if in resistance to their fate. Will swallows hard and forces himself to look up at Randall’s face, distorted, still dark from battery and blood. He forces himself to look, to see, that it’s not Beverly laid out before him.

Like an indictment, Will hears their voices in his head, colder than the steel beneath his fingers as he grips the table. A litany of failures.

“No,” he breathes suddenly, insistent, so quiet it scarcely could be called a whisper. “Not this one.”

Will sets his jaw and reaches for the pale blue gloves laid out for him, pulling them on with a flinch, the fingers of his right hand stiffening painfully.

“He would hate this,” Will says. “He would hate you seeing him this way. Weak. Human.”

"I knew him as human," Hannibal reminds him softly, watching Will war with himself over the man on the table. "I was there when he became this, it is fitting I be here for the end."

He allows a moment, enough for Will to take a breath and shake his head, before reaching to take up his own gloves. He should mourn. Would, if Randall had been as important to him as Will is. Long ago he had had promise, and he had lived up to his own creation in appearance, in the harsh desire for violence.

But he never became it. Never good for more than to tear and rend and bleed. In the end, the man who claimed his humanity, sought it and grasped it with desperate fingers, was the dominant predator.

Fitting.

Only humans kill for pleasure.

Perhaps Randall sought his escape more effectively than Will could begin to imagine.

Hannibal slips on a glove, adjusts it, before drawing the warm bare palm of his other hand over Will's neck again, against the soft hair there that was no longer sharp from the cut.

"Will you honor what he was?" He asks softly, a suggestion and a question both.

A twitch in Will’s mouth, as though there were a passing thought of perhaps smiling. He doesn’t withdraw from the broad hand, gentle against his skin.

“ _His end was in every way worthy of his life_ ,” Will responds, before snaring his lip between his teeth. Something in Will’s shoulders loosens, a gathered tension unfurling just as he knows the boy’s muscles are contracting, several hours passed now, a final silent struggle against the death of cells and structures and tissues taking place in inches throughout him.

“It would be fitting,” Will finally says, “to give him that which he most desired.”

He lets his hand move over the boy, down his arm, to fingers that would have ripped him limb from limb if he’d acted any slower. As if he could have acted slower. Their few minutes together were as hours, glass falling as though it were snow around him. He seeks out that part of himself that plunged blindly into the woods, that stood waiting in darkness, that let the shotgun fall heavy to the ground so that he could drop to his knees astride a bear in human form and end him.

That part of himself that he keeps hidden from the voices that call to him from this room.

And there, quick as moth wings against flames and just as soon immolated into ash, Will smiles, rueful. “I haven’t done this before.”

Hannibal returns the expression, eyes hooded and down to watch Will carefully. He squeezes gently against the man’s neck, draws the lingering warmth down to just below the neckline of his shirt and then steps away, sliding the second glove in place and adjusting that too.

Guidance he would offer. But praise Will had to earn.

“It is as intricate an art as any other,” he offers, tone warm. “The human body is the most complex instrument, nothing we have made can match it.”

He steps close to touch the body, much as Will had done moments before, but his touch is clinical, precise. Seeking points and pressure, tightness of muscle and delicate bends of the bones. A doctor’s touch.

“You can read what the mind writes on someone’s face, Will, you can read their intentions. The flesh is much simpler.” he offers a smile to his companion, “You will learn with practice.”

It’s the same tone he uses when he’s explaining an overwrought dinner service, Will realizes, the same ease of movement and gesture. He cants his head, watching Hannibal from beneath his hair with intense curiosity, sharply attentive. There’s a crack from the boy’s elbow as Hannibal flexes it, and Will swallows hard.

It’s not often one has the opportunity to watch someone so entirely in their element, to see their masks fall aside and watch them become transparently themselves in an open willingness to share their passions. It’s especially uncommon for those passions to involve easing rigor out of the limbs of a deceased former patient.

Will rubs the back of a gloved hand beneath his glasses, a shuddering sigh escaping that for a moment sounds alarmingly like laughter. Exhaustion and absurdity and violence crossing synapses, misfiring.

“I must be very lucky,” he responds, utterly genuine, “to be able to learn from such a legendary artist.”

He studies the tools beside him, laid out shining pristine and sharp, and before he can fully extend his hand towards them, he goes starkly pale.

“I have never had a student.” Hannibal admits, eyes up at the sound Will makes. He looks awed, confused, entertained, and more than a little sick. Hannibal supposes the latter is inevitable.

No matter.

That, too, will pass with time.

“It will be you who tells me if you are lucky.”

His smile falters when he sees Will pale, eyes slipping to their glassy state; not here. For a moment, Hannibal doesn’t move to snap Will back. He wonders if he’s trying to fall into the still shell in front of him, trying to process the pain and the suffering and the struggle from the other side.

He wonders how it feels to watch yourself destroy yourself, for the last thing you see to be yourself, dark and smiling, eyes calm, heart beat slow and steady where you can still feel it.

He is almost tempted to ask.

“Will.” he murmurs, waits for his voice to be registered. Straightens when it isn’t, immediately.

“You know this scene.” he says gently, “You know the motives and you know the relief that came with feeling the body beneath you shudder to stillness.”

Hannibal reaches to take Will’s hand, where it has stopped, extended, and runs his thumb lightly over the still-hot bruises against his knuckles, latex catching painfully on skin. The pain brings awareness back to the man in front of him.

Will jerks his hand back at the touch, gaze meeting Hannibal’s for only an instant, his own drawn dark as though snapping curtains shut behind his eyes. Something flares in Will, uncoils sinuous up his spine and he lets himself be gripped by it rather than allow the shudder that would ripple through him instead, shoulders loosening.

Reminded. Remembering.

He wonders if he could move fast enough with the scalpel beneath his stiffened fingers to open Hannibal’s throat, but he lets them skim until they settle on the bone saw instead. Quicker, he tells himself. More efficient.

“He was waiting, in the woods. Watching. He hurt my dog. He destroyed my house,” Will breathes, turning back towards the table. “He would have torn me in half,” he murmurs, looking at the boy broken in front of him. “He was fast. Strong.”

A pause, waiting as though at a canvas.

“I was stronger.”

“A better predator,” Hannibal agrees, settling his hand to the table again, just waiting to see if the anger will drive Will to react or if he’ll pull himself back. Rein it in enough.

He supposes he can forgive him his lack of finesse for the first time.

He considers the body once more, the canvas laid out plain, with bruises and nothing else marring the pale skin, as he had considered Will’s form, just weeks before. Just as pale, not marred at all. Smelling of cold showers, cheap aftershave and dogs. Nerves and cigarette smoke and sweat.

He remembers how his heart beat tasted.

“What will your first masterpiece be?” he asks, glancing up, “What will you show the world, Will?”

“He had to show the world a person,” Will responds, jaw working tight, not in anger but in thought. “I’ll show them the beast. The bones, the claws, the teeth he saw in himself.”

There’s no harm to be done to the dead, Will tells himself, another lie, another tug tighter on the noose already slowly killing him. He doesn’t bother to remind himself that he’s the one who made him that way - it’s hard to forget when he grips the boy’s wrist tight with his battered hand, flinching. Bracing himself, he rests the saw against the boy’s arm. Will’s cheeks are alight, fever red, and he breathes hard, once, through his nose before he lets the sharp teeth dig into yielding flesh.

The rushing sound in his ears is deafening, forcing his thoughts to silence until the blade scratches shrill against bone and the sound jerks him back to awareness, hand shaking despite how hard he grips the saw. Blood slicks the table beneath his gloves, thick with clots of coagulation that catch against his fingers.

“Fuck,” he breathes, lowering himself onto his heels, his own arm draped over Randall’s arm, half-removed. He studies unsteadily the snarl of muscle torn and shredded in front of him at eye-level and presses his own alarmingly warm arm over his mouth, swallowing back a heave.

Hannibal watches, fascinated, head canted as Will’s had been, eyes curious. He doesn’t flinch at the sound, doesn’t respond to the blood. He watches Will. Sees the way the tremble takes his shoulders and bends them, the way his body aches to respond as it should.

With fear. With nausea.

He wonders if he should tell Will that there is an electric saw for just this purpose. Refrains.

He straightens his shoulders, a deliberate movement, and stands to circle the table to stand at Will’s side.

“Like all art,” he says softly, “It requires patience.”

He brings his hand up to rest in Will’s hair, stroking the strands gently, feeling the heat pulse from Will in his panic. He cards his fingers through the curls until Will’s trembling eases, until he shifts.

“It requires a steady hand.” he curves his nails gently against the scalp, wishes he could feel the skin beneath his fingertips without the latex in the way. His lips twitch, just a little, as though to smile, when Will shudders at the feeling.

Conditioned pleasure response.

“Beyond that, every artist feels a certain way when they work.” he reassures him softly, taking his petting lower, to rub knuckles behind Will’s ear, “Art is meant to draw emotion, to bring to the surface the things we sometimes cannot say or express otherwise. It is why art is made.”

He reaches out to slide his hand over Will’s throat, just enough to put pressure on him to straighten up, no pressure after, just a slow slide of his palm down Will’s chest until he stands properly. Then he takes his hand away.

“The artist pours their emotion in,” he murmurs, stepping close enough to rest his hand against Will’s, still clutching the saw, “Those viewing it experience it by proxy.”

He curls his fingers over Will’s, gentle, guiding, his other hand settling against Will’s hip to hold him steady and still, thumb drawing circles over the soft skin just above the waistband of his pants.

“Breathe,” he whispers, positioning Will’s hand again.

Will bends without resistance, finding Hannibal’s body behind his, shoulders bracing in parallel against his chest. The word is hot across his neck and something loosens in him, shoulders aching deep with the sudden release of tension that unfurls up through his vertebrae, creating in himself a more pleasing shape for Hannibal to brace against.

Will’s grasp tightens beneath Hannibal’s hand and his forearms strain under specks of blood, quick, jagged cuts until the bone snaps clean. The remaining sinews part easily and Will imagines that he feels cold metal beneath his own bloodless fingers as the arm falls free.

He clenches his hand to return feeling to it, and allows a furtive look to the man behind him, following the lines of Hannibal’s face from his eyes, down to the curve of his mouth, before turning back to the work before them.

A quiet sense of power vines through him, as increasingly familiar as the fingers that trail against his skin and the tender voice that breathes poison into his mind. The ability to preserve and to destroy - to save and to condemn. Will runs a hand along the side of his face to wipe away a thin line of sweat and leaves behind a streak of gore, wine-stain dark against his pale skin, before removing his glasses and setting them aside.

“Four more to go,” Will notes dryly, twisting free of Hannibal’s guiding touch, something teasing in the movement - letting himself be pursued.

Fingers trail through the indention that borders the table, catching blood and funneling it down to drip from the opening at Randall’s feet, spattering against the drain built into the floor. Will places himself at the other arm, black gaze lighting on Hannibal’s - seeking approval and refusing it just as readily. Lips part in sympathetic response to the flesh that splits beneath his blade, as though it were his own.

Hannibal watches, allows a smile to warm his features to something almost human as Will removes the second limb, the cut cleaner, less jagged beyond where the saw snags on its own. His eyes linger on the dark smear on Will's face, both grotesque and utterly perfect. He does not follow him around the table.

The legs take longer, the bone thicker there, and Will's lips draw back in a snarl without sound as he expends more effort, muscles tightening to stark relief against his pale neck. Hannibal watches that. Watches the drop of sweat that makes its way down the column of Will’s throat. Watches the way Will cuts deliberately to leave most of the meat on the flank - tender, usable - his design adjusted to fit Hannibal’s within it.

By the time Will makes his way to Randall’s head, fingers out to catch under his chin and tilt it back, Hannibal has allowed his heart to beat faster, to take on a rhythm of both pleasure and anticipation. He steps up, then, behind Will, mirrors the man's cruel caress with a softer, gentler one, fingers lightly wiping sweat from his temples, down to his face and lower still, skimming the thin, sensitive skin under his jaw, feeling every light bump of his throat with his thumb.

"Very good, Will," he murmurs, tone low, warm, not quite catching in his throat. He takes Will's wrist to adjust his grip, just a little, just enough, so than when he cuts through the soft trachea, the saw will hit between the vertebra, lessen the effort he would have to expend to cut the head free.

He brushes his lips against the side of Will’s face, just above the slash of blood, bring them together in a semblance of a kiss at the corner of his eye. Then he steps back to let Will finish on his own.

Will snares his wrist before he can move away, body twitching with sparks of exhaustion when he pulls Hannibal’s arm around his waist. Blood sweeps across the back of Hannibal’s gloved hand and as their fingers lace and he presses Hannibal’s hand against his stomach to rub slow from hip to hip, Will leaves clots of crimson streaked across the once pristine white shirt. To keep Hannibal near him for this, to steady himself against the tremors that threaten to return and shake him into pieces, just like the ones laid out before them.

There will come a day, many of them in fact, when Will looks back on this moment, a willing sacrifice in the maw of a monster that will become legendary, and know that he was the only one to survive such nearness as this. The only one to watch and to see the designs that moved Hannibal Lecter. He’ll wake with paroxysms of awe and horror and blood on his hands and when he’s able to still the racing of his heart with those same memories he’ll lie sleepless and wonder what survival really means.

His muscles pull tight, scarlet smears past the gloves and over the whipcord tendons in his arms, and the final part of his design is brutal and ugly, long lines splitting pale skin and spilling dark coagulate that pools beneath ghostly shoulders. No scream of blade on bone as it passes cleanly between the vertebrae, separating mind from body. _He died as he lived._

Will lets loose the chin held gripped white-knuckled in his hand, and watches expressionless as it falls aside.

Far removed from the beast that would have been, segmented into portions on the table beneath. Evolved past the feral clawing snarls that left territorial bruises on Hannibal’s skin weeks before. Will is human, sweat-damp and blood-stained and achingly tired, and more than the sum of his own parts. Something has burnt out inside of him, immolated into ash and guttering darkness, and his pulse stills to a restive steadiness. More human than he’s ever been before.

He lets his shoulders sink again into Hannibal’s chest, tilting his head to allow him near the curve of his neck. Will removes his hand from Hannibal’s, trusting it to stay, and runs a gloved finger across the mouth of the boy presented to him as a gift.

A reward.

A challenge.

Fingers pushing aside slack lips, Will lets his fingertips graze the teeth that should have been fangs, that would have gladly rent him in half along the same line that Hannibal’s hand follows across his belly, tracing invisible scars.

“What would you have done,” Will asks, “if he had succeeded?”

Hannibal makes a considering sound, soft, and surrenders to Will for just a moment, closes his eyes and buries his face in the soft, still- damp hair. He is beautiful like this, pliant and exhausted and covered in blood. Primal. Real.

"I would not have honored him." Hannibal tells him honestly.

The thought no longer lingers of "what if". No treacherous tendrils of doubt that perhaps Randall should have lived in Will’s stead. No. Had the beast won, it would have found wrath at Hannibal’s hand, not kindness.

He pulls Will further back against himself, sets his own legs wider to balance them both and tilts his head to kiss Will's jaw, down to his neck. Just reward for a job done well, and fulfilling an ache long growing in Hannibal’s gut, in his chest, as his heart beats heavy thumps against Will’s back.

"I would have removed his mask and laid him bare," he continues, voice hoarse and low, the hand at Will’s belly joined by his other, "kept him as human as he had not wanted to be."

His hands slide to rest against Will’s hips, to gently rock him back, before hooking his thumbs just under the loose waistband and caressing warm latex over the skin there, teasing. Another promise if Will keeps going.

"Mounted," he breathes, tone a deep velvet of implication, "splayed. Presented."

Will sets the saw aside and wraps his arm back over Hannibal's shoulders, tired fingers hooking loose against his neck to keep him there, to let the familiarity warm him against the chill of the basement and the gore drying on his skin. Will shivers as he presses back into the support Hannibal offers him, letting himself be moved without resistance, sinking into him - shoulders, spine, hips - and his head rolls forward, loose and limber, lips parting to allow a sound to escape, somewhere between discomfort and desire.

His pulse quickens beneath Hannibal's mouth, at the feel of Hannibal's heart beating just a little faster against his back. And when his eyes drift closed, Will envisions that the darkness Hannibal's fingers leave smudged sticky across his stomach is his own.

"Would you miss me?" The words drip in a whisper past his lips, soft as blood falling against the floor.

Hannibal closes his eyes at the sticky, cold sensation against his neck, against his shirt that he will need to clean, bleach, press… But Will’s words force his eyes open. A slow slide first, hooded, watching the corner of the table that he can see over Will’s shoulder, then fully at the implication.

_What would you have done if he had succeeded?_

The man in his arms doesn’t speak in fear, he doesn’t speak in a hushed tone that suggests he had expected to lose, expected that to happen. He doesn’t speak as if he wished for it to be so. He’s asking, in the most blatant, gentle way, if Hannibal would care if he wasn’t standing here right now.

Hannibal makes a soft noise that translates as vibrations over Will’s back, as a warm press of air against his neck.

_What would you have done?_

He would have done nothing. Gone to the crime scene, watched Jack and the rest of the team mourn their friend as they had mourned Beverly. He would have passed on enough for Randall Tier to be captured, if he could be captured, or killed in the struggle.

Perhaps he would have orchestrated it to be a struggle.

Then he would have returned to his practice. Would have taken clients. Kept the 7:30 slot open regardless of the impossibility of that person ever showing up, on time or late. He would have sat across from the empty chair and imagined Will stretching himself there slowly, eyes away from Hannibal as he spoke. He would have closed his eyes and breathed in the lingering memory of the smoke Will had exhaled into the cool office.

_What would you have done?_

When Hannibal swallows, it clicks in his throat, a telling, vulnerable sound. He lets his eyes close again, lets himself press and hold the warmth of Will against him, feeling every inch of him as skin and muscle and bone and so much more than that besides.

“What would I do without you?” he replies softly.

Will doesn't withdraw as he feels a sharpness inside him, as though his ribs were sinking into his lungs, a painful tightness that comes, and goes, as it has before.

_Don't lie to me._

He doesn't know what he expected to hear.

If he'd had to guess, if he were honest with himself, it would have been something very near to this.

Will remains soft against Hannibal, lets him absorb the warmth that he feels draining from himself every day, hour, minute, breath.

An omission instead of an answer.

A reminder.

Will breathes quiet through his nose, and his jaw works into something like a smile as his hand slips free of Hannibal's neck. He grasps the saw in his injured hand and feels the skin split across his knuckles, reopening. His weakness tastes bitter on his tongue and he traces it across the inside of his lip, and tastes Hannibal there, too.

Bared in sacrifice and found wanting.

"What's left to be done?" he asks and answers, unreadable but for quiet resolve to finish what he's started.

The silence is telling enough in its weight, before the question, and Hannibal takes a deep breath. It’s a misunderstanding he can’t reverse, knows Will won’t believe unless it’s conditioned into him, pushed through the warm skin to the marrow of his bones.

He waits a beat, two, before letting Will go and reluctantly stepping away.

“We check the organs,” he says, tone returned to that false mellowness of dinner parties and client conversations. “If they are healthy, we can store them. Until a feast presents itself.”

He offers a superficial smile and gently removes the saw from Will’s hand, replacing it with a scalpel.

“Patience,” he reminds him, a gentle clasp of his fingers around Will’s wrist, feeling his pulse, slow and steady and calm. His lips twitch.

“Breathe.”

Will releases a breath, as expected, although his heart is stilled already.

Another scarlet streak smears along his brow as he pushes his hair back from his face. Will’s hand remains steady as he draws the blade down in a narrow line that widens as the skin smoothly parts behind it. He swallows hard, letting the reserved tone settle into him, to cool the flush dying pale on his cheeks.

“What will you take?” he asks, clinical, passively curious. Tired, well beyond the physical exhaustion of his body. His fingers find their way beneath the skin, prying it absently from the ribs beneath. Detached. Removed.

It’s easier when they’re in pieces.

“The lungs,” Hannibal responds gently, watching Will’s hands work, watches the blood smear over the blue latex, “Liver, perhaps. Kidneys. Organs are fragile, Will, it’s difficult to store them. It is always best to have them fresh to work with.”

He presses his lips together and watches Will take up the handsaw again without comment. He lets his eyes linger over Will’s shoulder, at the wall where the electric saw hangs for this very reason. He doesn’t point it out.

“Perhaps I’ll take the heart.” he adds.

He allows a faint coil of amusement at the tightening of Will’s jaw at the words. The implication there as well. When he steps away, it’s to show Will where to place the saw, gentle guidance that does little more than brush the back of his hand, steady his wrist before letting Will do the work himself, as he returns to the other side of the table to watch him.

It tugs at him that his words had withdrawn Will instead of opened him. He wonders if Will had sensed a lie at the hesitation - for once, he hadn’t meant it as one. He had told Will the absolute truth, opened himself, for a brief moment, in turn.

“Everyone wants to be missed,” Hannibal says gently, eyes on the body as it shudders with the power of Will’s hand and the saw, “Everyone fears that they won’t be. It’s the human condition, to seek approval and attention, satisfaction. Affection.” he licks his lip, waits for Will to walk around the table to set the saw against the ribs there.

He can see the beads of sweat just under the hair line. He smells clean. No fevered heat, no terror. Nothing but exhaustion that draws bone-deep and aching.

He sets his arms on either side of Will again, brings his lips close to his ear with the way his body leans over him.

“You have my attention, Will.” he says. Feels the way Will shivers with the rest of the implication. You have earned my approval. You bring me satisfaction. And affection...

He wants Will to understand that the emptiness he would leave, the space, would be palpable. That Hannibal would notice it, would respond and be unable to fill it.

_I would miss you._

“Breathe,” it’s a sigh against Will, unnecessary, a reminder.

Will's fingers curl around the sternum smooth and white and he lifts it with a quick jerk of his wrist, clean edges of the ribs sharp enough to cut. He lets it fall, clattering loud against the table, and braces his hands against the steel.

His shoulders hunch beneath Hannibal, painfully exposed to the words that fall against him, laid bare as the remains open on the table.

He breathes, forces air into his lungs to feel them fill, to feel his heart work. He doesn't know who he hears anymore, how much of his thoughts are actually his own or Hannibal's or the former person now parceled out by his own hands beneath him. Unable to hide in himself even if he wanted to, his own voice just as untrustworthy as all the others. An inside as equally dangerous as the outside.

A shudder ratchets through his spine, and he turns to face Hannibal, leaning back against the table.

When he speaks, his words are even, measured, as though the control were actually his own, grasped like bones and just as likely to slice through him if held too hard. He speaks through his teeth, through the blood drawn across his face as though emerging from a fog of war.

"I want this to mean something."

Exposed. Open. Raw.

Hannibal’s jaw works to swallow, hands now against Will’s hips, displaced from his arms by the motion of Will turning. Will’s eyes are darker, a stormy blue, and he meets Hannibal’s own without flinching.

He wonders what Will wants this to mean. He wonders if he’ll be angry to learn this means something, that this means more than either of them can control.

A perfect storm.

“It is more dangerous, for us, Will, because it already does.” Hannibal says softly, gloved hands moving to stroke his thumbs under Will’s ribs through the thin shirt.

Will feels his bones opening, each rib snapping free in turn as Hannibal's touch slides over them, tracing laceration into his skin.

It hurts, and in hurting, heals. Again and again.

_One ship very much like another, and the sea always the same._

The words are a confession, and their honesty slices satisfyingly deep. Will's eyes lower to where his fingers have come to rest against the buttons of Hannibal's shirt, without Will's permission, without Will's restriction. He watches as his palm spreads over Hannibal's chest - along the same bone he just pulled from Randall's chest - but instead of the emptiness he expects, he feels the immutable heart beneath it and imagines it might beat faster, just a little, just enough.

"I thought I knew what it would mean. All of this."

Will swallows, allows uncertainty to show and pretends that it's his choice.

"I don’t think I do anymore."

Hannibal hums, lamenting, for a moment, his shirt where Will is still drawing bloody smears to mirror the skeleton trapped beneath warm skin. Should it even matter, what it means, when it's already enough that it _does?_

He says nothing, splays his fingers over Will's side before leaning in to kiss the side of his face, tasting the cold metal of old blood. It amuses him, in a strangely light way, that Will had opened up here, as he had opened the body in front of them.

Fitting.

Falling yet again into a mind that invades him like a virus.

His lips tilt in a smile, small but genuine with the way the corners of his eyes crinkle. He kisses the corner of Will’s mouth and lingers, brings a hand up to turn Will to him properly, lips sliding over his skin before he parts Will's lips with a sigh, a warm tongue.

The heat surprises him, draws a shocked sound from Will as their tongues brush soft before Hannibal's mouth closes over his own. Alive. Awake. Whole.

It grounds him, the fire in Hannibal's body and breath, grounds him back amongst the living and he runs a hand up Hannibal’s chest to take it in, resting his palm against Hannibal’s neck before he feels the still-damp latex between their skin. Will rests his arms over Hannibal’s shoulders, fingers tugging the gloves off quick and letting them fall wet to the floor.

Incandescence against his arms as they sink around Hannibal’s neck, a sigh passing between them as their lips part before he pulls him close again, fingers lacing through his hair.

Hungry - no, starved to feel living skin against his own, Will pushes the length of his body into Hannibal to sate himself.

The pleasure is transmitted through a widening of the smile, a gentle hum against Will, before Hannibal pulls him close, gives him the reassurance he needs, allows the contact, ignores the mess.

He works his gloves off as well, tosses them to the table behind Will, and splays his hands against him again, this time feeling the stickiness of the blood against his palms, the warmth of Will through the thin fabric. He can feel his heart, the way it’s sped up again to match the relief coursing through Will.

He suddenly _wants_. Wants to lift Will and set him against the table, press himself between his thighs to feel the full-body shiver that runs through Will every other time he has. He wants Will laid bare, spread and the best kind of vulnerable.

He wants, he wants, _he wants…_

He feels the blood stick tacky in his hair, feels the familiar dismay at the mess uncurl in his chest before it’s stifled by the sheer determination with which Will presses closer. He sets one hand against Will’s curls, slides between the smooth strands and tugs.

Will gasps, supple beneath the firm grip, and sighs hard past lips parted slack in absolute relief. Here but not, present but not in this place, absorbed wholly into the man who holds him fast.

He remains bent, curved to suit Hannibal’s pleasure but lets his fingers work their way to Hannibal’s face to trace the rise of his cheekbones, the line of his jaw and the rueful smile that curves his mouth. This is safe, Will knows, in spite of what rationality tells him, he knows, and he catches his hand on Hannibal’s jaw to draw him close, leaning back beneath him as their mouths meet smoldering until he feels the table press cold and inexplicable against his back.

A startled noise and behind his eyes an obscenity of gore and a boy’s face split open beneath his fist and leans forward again into Hannibal.

_No._

Heat. Breath. Pulse.

Losing the images to raw sensation.

“Please,” he breathes against Hannibal’s mouth.

The smile that meets the word is hungry, familiar, and there’s a brief sharp tug of teeth against Will’s bottom lip before Hannibal lets him go enough to move on his own.

He lets his eyes settle over the scene, the partially undone body, unwrapped like an unwanted present and left.

He could return for that later. Clean, set, adjust… right now it is far from Hannibal’s list of priorities with Will nearly vibrating with need in his arms. He licks his lips and presses close, brushing his nose against Will’s with a sigh. His beautiful, exhausted, extraordinary boy.

“You’ve quite undone the benefit of your earlier shower,” he comments softly, hand soft against Will’s face, thumb tracing the smooth eyebrow and just brushing the fringe that hangs low over it.

He smiles wider, feeling Will nod shakily against him, and that need, that aching need, swells in his chest again.

He pulls back just enough to kiss Will, this one a gentle, chaste thing lest he be drawn against him now. He needs to be away from here, to have Will away from this place where his mind won’t wander. He needs him present.

“Come with me.”

Will follows. He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t debate, and he doesn’t look back - he knows what would happen if he looked upon his destruction again, like Lot’s wife overlooking the judgment of Sodom.

His fingers find Hannibal’s as he turns to lead them out, following him through the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Will’s body is made to take pleasure; the way he responds, adjusts, pushes back against everything Hannibal is giving him when he is utterly helpless to control it. More, less, deeper... it's not his choice, not his decision or his right to ask - not yet. Not when Hannibal wants to see the depth of pleasure it would take to swallow Will Graham whole._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...another slow slide from two chapters to three, from wariness to intimacy.

The basement door has scarcely closed before Will has pinned himself to Hannibal again.

It is much harder to keep his distance when there is no table between them, no obligation hanging heavy and cold. Hannibal allows Will to press to him again, hands quick and not quite coordinated until he finds the first button and anchors himself to the sensation. Then he lets Will’s fingers work quickly, moves his own hands to pull the undershirt from Will’s pants to ruck up under his arms, nails dragging parallel red lines down Will’s sides after, skimming over the ribs.

He exhales, arches against Will when the other has his shirt splayed, hands showing just as little regard for gentleness against him.

They’re filthy, blood drying on fabric and skin, in hair. The taste lingers still on Hannibal’s lips and he licks it away.

They leave in their wake a trail of clothes, fallen behind like the thoughts invasive and fresh that Will pries loose from himself with every brush of fingers, every pass of lips against his own.

Through the kitchen, the hallway, up the stairs - but Will’s legs are heavier than expected, muscles aching deep from the night’s activities and he stumbles on a step, throwing out a hand to catch Hannibal’s ankle and drag him down as well. The older man doesn’t fall so much as allow himself to lower, reflexes frighteningly fast to plant his hands into the carpet and turn to face Will. In fast pursuit, Will grasps Hannibal’s shoulders and shoves him back, bodies sliding together as he pulls himself up between Hannibal’s thighs and drives into him, grinding against him possessive and fierce.

None of the dark-eyed restraint of their therapy or the pensive touching that has increasingly followed it - the careful hands that guide each other to controlled release. Will is breathless, no heed paid to his pulse or the hard thrashing of his heart - revelling in it, in the way his sides heave and the way Hannibal’s hair falls untidy beneath his fingers and the taste of Hannibal’s tongue against his own.

He halts his own pendulum now, the only part of himself he bothers to control, unwilling to let its persistent swings disrupt them.

It brings out a part of Will he usually keeps tightly muzzled, the part he had allowed free to beat someone to death with his bare hands, the part that had not hesitated to fire bullet after bullet into Garret Jacob Hobbs. The part that, now, claws at Hannibal to stay still, to stay _down_ as Will latches his lips under his jaw and sucks.

Primal.

Bestial.

_Claiming._

Hannibal manages to draw up his knee, keeping Will balanced between it and the balustrade, the heel of his shoe hooked over the edge of the step. It's messy and uncoordinated and so _human_ , he has never had anything in his life be so human as Will. He brings his grounding in the strangest way and Hannibal finds he can deny him nothing.

He insinuates one hand between them, drawing a pleased gasp from Will, and curls his other around the post closest to his head, to pull himself up and keep balanced both.

Will radiates need and desire and absolute abandon against him, and the doctor realizes that this is the most vulnerable he has ever seen Will, despite his thrashing and determination, that the only thing keeping him from losing consciousness to his own fears and genuine human exhaustion is this need driving his hips over and over against Hannibal’s.

He lets go of the balustrade to curl his hand in Will’s hair again, gentle at first, then twisting almost harshly to get him to look up, eyes narrowed and teeth bared.

He's _stunning._

"Up," he manages.

Will draws his bottom lip between his teeth, a moment of hesitation as his own thoughts speak their own commands - _here, now, you_ \- before, as ever, Hannibal’s roughened voice overrides his own. The command wraps through his mind the same way Hannibal’s hand wraps in his hair, curls dried stiff with blood and sweat, and he loosens his grip from Hannibal’s shoulders to follow.

He peels off his shoes as he goes, letting them fall thumping down the stairs, tugging his socks off and leaving them behind. Will’s attention catches briefly on the suit of armor standing guard outside the bedroom. He wants to ask but doesn’t, already overloaded with information that filters away unprocessed - _here, now, you_... the chorus sings through his body.

The bedroom is an arrangement of blues and creams perfectly paired, carefully constructed, and Will’s blood rushes hard in his ears. He catches a hand against an antique dresser to steady himself against the intimacy that surprises him, a sudden dizziness of realization as to where he is. Uncertainty in the way Will wets his lips, drawing the taste of Hannibal’s mouth from his own, a familiar lust rendered unfamiliar, no longer under the illusion of context that their trysts in Hannibal’s office provides him.

Hannibal turns at Will’s soft noise, a noise the doctor is fairly certain Will does not realize he's made. The setting, he supposes, is enough to cloud Will’s mind back to confusion. It had lilted like a whine, though it was barely softer than air between his lips, and he realizes that this is the first time he can see Will bared to him properly.

He toes off his shoes, slides then to the side where they will not be in the way, then bends to remove his socks before he returns to stand in front of Will, silent now on bare feet.

He’s so pale, the blood dried brown dark enough to match his hair. Will looks much younger, much more vulnerable here, and Hannibal soothes both hands up Will’s arms and to his shoulders, hot over his neck to cup his face and kiss him again.

It's gentle here, a grounding, and it's enough to bring Will back with a jolt, to the here, the now, the desperation that had moments before pulled him into action. Hannibal smiles, hums, pleased, as Will's fingers fumble with the catch at his pants. He allows himself a beat before mirroring the gesture with cat-like grace.

Will watches Hannibal’s skilled fingers work effortlessly to bare himself, and feels warmth flood ruddy through his cheeks. A quiet sense of power, seeing Hannibal move so easily, so readily in this way for him. _Breathe_ , Will reminds himself, pushing his pants - provided to him, now spattered and stained with evidence of their evening - down to his thighs. He steps out of them, closes the distance between them, and presses his mouth against Hannibal’s chest.

He bows his head and kisses, bites, against the soft hair beneath his lips, hands dropping to snare Hannibal’s hips and pull them close against his own. Eyes closed to shut off the flow of new knowledge in this place that threatens to distract him, Will finds himself in the warm body he presses against - raw and purified feeling, information gathered innate and instinctive by hyper-aware senses. The twitch he feels beneath his hands, the smolder beneath his mouth, the sound of Hannibal’s breath as it catches when his lips brush across a nipple, tasting a line over it.

_Here. Now. You._

Will follows the movement of his hands, gliding over purposeful muscle firm beneath his palms, down Hannibal’s thighs. Unable to draw away from the warmth he drinks in with every kiss, lower, until his knees meet carpet. Eyes up, from beneath a tangle of hair, hands wrapping around Hannibal’s legs.

There’s no subservience in his position now, at Hannibal’s feet, no submission in the way his lips unfurl eager and flushed.

Reverence.

Abandon.

_Breathe._

Hannibal’s eyes close in a gentle blink, open just wide enough to see Will but no further; hooded, pleased, lazy.

Will’s eagerness here was a pleasant surprise for Hannibal the first time he had stood from his chair and walked over to straddle Hannibal in his. Will is not new to pleasure, he is simply new to this particular brand of it, and that newness fills him like a drug. Darkens his eyes and widens his pupils until the blue is just a memory, a shadow when he blinks.

The Will that kneels before him now is entirely himself, entirely present. Lips parted and dark tongue flicking out briefly to wet the bottom one. He looks nothing like the offering he had been the first time he’d pressed so close.

The sacrifice was already bled, already given its attention downstairs. Hannibal reaches forward to brush the backs of his knuckles over the dry blood on Will’s face before sliding palm-flat over his jaw to clasp the back of his neck. He doesn’t pull him, he steps closer himself. Free hand down to rest against the waistband of the boxers he still wears, lips twitching in a fond smile.

Hannibal’s thighs are nearly hot to the touch, carved strong and with intention. Will makes a quiet sound, pleased, at the spark of nerves as he presses his mouth against the soft skin and works upwards, fingers grazing the back of Hannibal’s hands as he slides the waistband past his hips, just enough.

Will doesn’t need to speak to convey that he hasn’t done this before - everything between them new and unfamiliar beyond the walls that are breaking down with startling speed. The soft noise Will makes is enough, beyond words, as he takes Hannibal into his mouth and tastes salt and sweat and heat against his tongue, working slow to fill his mouth and then draw back again. Goosebumps raise beneath the broad hand against his neck.

Fingers splay over Hannibal’s stomach, the others still wrapped firm around his leg, and he lets his eyes close, selecting the information he wants, how he wants these memories to shape. Another noise, a muffled moan around Hannibal as he feels the older man’s cock hardening, uncontrollable surges even under Hannibal’s absolute skill, felt like fireworks against Will’s lips and stirring a tight tangle of desire deep in the pit of his belly.

A quiet sense of power.

Hannibal exhales at the sound Will makes, the gentle vibrations it draws against his skin. Somehow the inexperience makes it easier, to bite back the need to move, the need to grasp Will’s hair tighter and draw him closer… he can feel the younger man coiling himself up for this, anticipation melding to desire and the pull to make it right and good and now.

He drops his head back, eyes away from Will for the moment, on the neutral cream of the ceiling. The only light filters from downstairs, enough to see by, enough to cast shadows across the floor and over their skin.

He feels Will take him a little deeper and allows a sound, a deep, pleased hum in his chest. Will shivers, raises himself higher on his knees, bends closer; the sound enough praise to bring out the conditioned response of knowing he’d done well, that he can keep doing well, and better.

Clever boy.

It’s a deep satisfaction, and Hannibal smiles, shoulders rolling back in a languid stretch as he ducks his head and watches Will again, parts his lips to murmur praise in a language he knows Will doesn’t understand, but that draws the younger man’s limbs to shaking just as easily.

The gentle twist of fingers in his hair and the faint rumbles of approval draw like bowstrings deep inside Will, vibrating taut. His lips part wider, sliding over skin soft as velvet, and he braces his hands against Hannibal’s hips to lower himself further. A tickling pressure against the back of his throat snaps the bowstrings, body tightening as he chokes just quietly, before hollowing his cheeks to suck, experimental and unsteady, head bowed as though in prayer.

Fully hard now, veins pulsing against his tongue, Will draws himself off of Hannibal to catch his breath, fingers grasping against dark tangles of hair. His mouth is damp, swollen, and he rocks back onto his heels to wipe away a line of silvery spit from his chin before leaning close again.

Will draws languid kisses along Hannibal’s length, pressing heat from his mouth and breath and tongue, sensitive skin and saliva grazing Will’s cheek until he’s mouthing softly at the base, tongue firmly tasting Hannibal at his most primal - musk, sweat, skin, _here, now, you_. Will’s breath comes hard, his cheeks and neck and bare shoulders burning torrid red, and he lets his gaze drift - _eyes up_ \- taking in the expansive man above him.

From here, he finally looks as overwhelming as he so often feels.

Often, but not now, as Will glides his hand over Hannibal’s length. Not above, but equal. Held. Possessed.

_His._

There’s a flaring in Will’s eyes, something starved to near madness but finally fed, and he holds his gaze as he guides Hannibal past his lips again.

The sight is enough to part Hannibal’s lips on a groan, low and louder than before. He watches as Will doesn’t blink, doesn’t set any barrier between his eyes and Hannibal’s and takes him in, gives him this.

The dark coiling within him that urges to push and force and _make_ unfurls for just a moment, and he runs harsh nails through Will’s hair until the younger man groans, closes his eyes and swallows before blinking and looking up again. An obedience Hannibal had never asked for but is more than willing to accept.

“Beautiful,” he tells him, voice like gravel, heavy and warm and breathless. His tongue curls briefly to wet his bottom lip before his teeth press there shortly after, pushing it out of shape, bleaching the color from it with the pressure.

His breathing is harsher now, hard exhales and barely there inhales, the barest shift of hips against the willing mouth, the warm hands that hold on. He feels a heat, like fingers down his spine, pool at the base of it at the sight of the possession in Will’s eyes; he looks pleased, powerful, _smug_. Hannibal’s smile widens just enough, and he holds Will still, tilts his head just a little for a change of angle that will help Will breathe, and then slowly pushes deeper, eyes dark and holding Will’s gaze.

“Breathe.”

Will yields unresistant to the guidance, the cues both deliberate and drawn from Hannibal himself - holds his head just so, keeps his pale gaze raised proud and hungry as Hannibal pushes himself over Will's tongue. A subtle heave, throat clicking softly at the unfamiliar movement, but quickly settled, encouraging through passivity for Hannibal to continue. To guide. To teach.

To form and move and shape him.

Will suppresses another snap of tension through his throat as Hannibal presses deeper still, goosebumps prickling sharp along his bare skin when Hannibal curls fingernails against his scalp. A memory rises sharp in his throat and he tries to swallow it down, light flashing behind his eyes and cold plastic slick against his tongue. He chokes roughly and twists away to breathe, gaze broken, mindless of the damp threads that fall from his lips as he pants, chest heaving.

He will learn, with practice.

For just a brief moment, Hannibal doesn’t let go. Lets his fingers linger until the hair in his grip is pulled taut, stretched to straight from the supple curls they usually hold. Then he relents, allows Will to sit back, to catch his breath… takes his victory in the knowledge of control, that as Will controls him with his willingness so Hannibal can control him just as effectively.

Effortlessly.

He guides Will back when he tries again, allows him to attempt his own depth, his own pace, pushing only when he can feel Will’s fingers curl sharp against his thighs in promise.

It’s an exquisite sort of torture, this slow build.

But it’s the sounds, the soft, weak little things that fall from Will’s lips that finally push Hannibal to move, to bend, stepping out of the last clothing still clinging to him, and tilts Will’s head up to kiss him, to lick the taste of himself from those dark, parted lips.

He brushes his thumb over Will’s cheek, flaking the blood away, until Will reaches to grasp his arm, kissing back with the same abandon that had pushed him into Hannibal’s arms downstairs, the same delicious, divine need.

“On the bed,” he whispers, harsh and quick, though his expression is anything but; languid and pleased and just a little flushed from the sensations coursing through his blood like adrenaline.

“On your knees.”

Will nods, still breathing hard as he turns towards the bed, barefoot and inelegant in the boxers that sit too large on his hips. He is loose, limber with exhaustion and a ravenous desire that overrides his sundry diagnosed anxieties when he approaches the bed and runs his fingers over the thick blanket spread across it. Expensive and dark, like everything here.

He wonders absently if Hannibal makes his own bed every morning, and knows that he must.

Mindful of the perfect tidiness of the bed, utterly smooth and without the slightest wrinkle, a smile catches faintly and Will slides languid back onto it, feeling the textiles gather and twist under him. Blood dried to brown flakes from his forearms as he pushes himself to the center of the bed, and watches Hannibal from beneath his tangled hair.

Curiosity in the curve of his mouth, still flushed dark and damp, when he observes the older man bared in front of him. A softly simmering defiance as he leaves his marks on the bed beneath him.

He rises to his knees, heavy-lidded and amused, and with a coyness in the tilt of his head, he hooks his thumbs in the black boxers already threatening to fall from his hips.

Hannibal lets him, watches as Will makes the space his own, deliberately marks it with the evidence of his kill, his ritual. He knows it will smell of Will in the morning, that intoxicating mix of spicy need and the underlying newness of everything Hannibal plans to do to him.

It’s not quite innocence, that smell, but it sets Hannibal’s mind drifting. Addictive.

The coyness sits comfortably on Will, the way his body relaxes into this, how he allows himself to show his back to someone who is, in essence, a predator, a killer Will has seen through the eyes of and into the eyes of, how he allows the tightness that holds his muscles every other day to slip.

The black cloth is stark against his pale skin, fitting, and Hannibal rests his knee against the bed to help Will slide the fabric fully away before shifting up behind him.

Will’s back is warm against his chest when he pulls him close there, familiar in the way he held him similarly down in the basement when Will needed to ground himself, remember. Here, he’s pliant and soft, willing and aroused, and shifts his hips back against Hannibal as his arm curls to grasp his neck again, where the last of the blood remains sticky, not yet dried against the skin.

He ducks his head, presses hot lips to Will’s jaw, to just under it. His hands trace the muscles over Will’s stomach, trail lower to the dark thatch of hair between his legs, tease around the base of his cock but don’t take it in a grip.

Hannibal’s lips trail lower, down Will’s neck, leaving wet swaths of tongue before he breathes over them, cooling them to dry, making Will shiver with the sensation. He noses behind Will’s ear and finally curls his hand around him, stroking slow for the moment, just enough to feel him fill in his palm, heavy and hot. Will makes a noise, a stuttered sort of sigh of pleasure, and bucks back.

Hannibal keeps the pace achingly slow when he kisses his way over Will’s shoulders, over the scars there that he can finally see, where before he had seen only Will’s gentle attempts at masking them with his movements, down his back where he kisses every bump of his spine before running the flat of his palm after and bending Will forward.

He shifts back, adjusts Will to rest on his elbows as he keeps up the gentle mouthing over his skin, a worship that makes Will tremble with need and arch for more.

He kisses his tailbone and brings both hands back to spread Will for him, to breathe just barely against where he is most sensitive, before leaning close and brushing just the tip of his tongue over the puckered hole.

Exposed, and embarrassed by his exposure, Will starts to twist away from the firm hands that open him - it feels obscene and strange and he goes taut with resistance. Taut until he feels the heat of Hannibal's breath against him. Resistant until he registers the pressure of Hannibal’s tongue, still obscene, still strange, but guiding stillness through his spine in the way Hannibal's hands and lips had moments before.

"Oh," Will breathes against the plush blanket, a curve caressing through his back as he sinks further onto his elbows. The second touch, just a little more than the first, pulls a hard shiver down his neck and trickles through his limbs - fingers twitching against the bedcover and toes curling just a little. A shiver that sinks into his stomach, a twist of dire pleasure that pushes another surprised moan past his lips.

Each trace of tongue, sweeping soft, each breath that cools fast against Will’s sensitive skin rebounds through him, ripples shuddering into larger waves. He reaches back - another first, another newness, another wall crumbling between them - and grasps his own cock, solid and hard in his hand. His moans catch in the blankets like the wrinkles his fingers gather, clenching tight.

“Fuck,” Will breathes, a tremulous gasp. The bend in his back digs deeper, hips arching higher into the warm mouth that presses against his opening in a slow kiss that curls his toes and teases uncontrolled twitches down his legs, stomach, arms. Every part of him out of his control, every part of him yielding utterly.

And Hannibal savors it. Savors every twitch and shudder, every gasp Will can't keep behind gritted teeth.

Will’s body is _made_ to take pleasure; the way he responds, adjusts, pushes back against everything Hannibal is giving him when he is utterly helpless to control it. More, less, deeper... it's not his choice, not his decision or his right to ask - not yet. Not when Hannibal wants to see the depth of pleasure it would take to swallow Will Graham whole.

He slides his hands away, for just a moment, to spread Will's thighs for him further, to deepen the arch in his back and draw a barely voiced plea from the man under him - but not beneath him. No. He wants to raise Will like an idol, worshiping him, reminding him, conditioning him to understand.

_What would I do without you?_

He licks from the silky skin of Will’s balls to his entrance again, slow, deliberate, and holds him open just enough to push the tip of his tongue in, feeling the spasm of pleasure that contracts the muscles around his tongue, that contorts Will’s entire body into trembling and whimpering.

Hannibal grins, hearing the muffled sob Will bites into the sheets, and presses further.

Will’s entire body contracts, only to expand again with a savage moan that tears itself out of the darkness deep inside him. He draws up a foot in ecstatic resistance, wanting Hannibal to stop, wanting Hannibal to never stop, wanting it deeper, shallower, harder, softer, faster, slower, everything - everything all at once.

_Beautiful._

He’s lost, the voices and the memories all driven into silence. Lost, as he earlier feared he would become. Lost in his own body and in the tremors that burn phosphor bright behind his eyes. A kind of lost that feels far sweeter than he could possibly have imagined.

Barely able to work his hand against himself, Will gasps against the sheets that gather in a clenched fist.

“Don’t stop,” Will pleads, a whimper snaring his voice, vulnerable, laden with affection. The walls around him turned to dust, raw emotion pulsing fast as the heart that flutters desperate against his chest.

Hannibal obliges, doesn’t even slow down when Will starts to systematically break apart in his hands, all inhibition forgotten, all masks and pretences fallen away in this onslaught of sensation that Will has never felt before. Pleasure just as potent as fear, as just powerful and twisting.

He only stops when it feels like Will is about to lose himself completely, lips parted wide as his eyes are closed, against the sheets, one hand tight in the blanket under him, the other tight against his cock as he strokes with an unsteady grip and jerking motions.

Hannibal catches his hand to still him.

“Be patient,” he murmurs, kissing the smooth back that trembles, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, under him, “Be patient.”

A word at the end that Will doesn’t know, doesn’t care, it’s enough. Praise, suggestion, the deepest sort of intimacy. It draws another whine from him, long and shaking, and Hannibal presses his body over Will’s for just a moment, just enough to seep his warmth against him, to allow Will to relax back into him.

“Wait.” he whispers, pulling back and getting off the bed just long enough to gather something from the bathroom, run the tap warm to rinse his mouth before returning and pulling Will around so he can rest on his back, take the weight and pressure of his shaking knees.

“Look at you…” he breathes, eyes hooded, throat working to swallow before he leans in to kiss him, lips just cooler than Will’s from the water.

Will is still bent in half, head bowed low when Hannibal finds him again, breathing hard into his arm until he's guided to relax, and rolls languidly onto his back.

If he weren't so hard, desire wrapped barbed-wire tight through him begging for release, he would be asleep already. His body hurts, aches with exhaustion from pain and exertion and pleasure, sharp like thorns past skin and muscle and sinew and into his bones.

It eases when Hannibal speaks to him with such affection. It eases when their mouths meet, sliding smooth together.

Will slides his arms around Hannibal’s neck, lacking the strength to pull him close but letting him come nearer. Letting his body settle in over Will’s own, heavy and dense and protective - fiercely so - over him.

He is undone, all resistances driven from him through force and through fondness, seeking out only familiarity as he kisses smoldering against Hannibal’s mouth, the corner of his lips, the hard line of his jaw, his cheek, until he can bury his face against Hannibal’s neck and let his mouth come to rest against his pulse.

Destroyed and reborn.

Will breathes.

“Please.”

Hannibal moves against him, not enough to upset Will from his position but enough to rest on his knees between Will’s legs, spreading them farther with his own. He reaches for the bottle he’d retrieved from the bathroom, kissing the side of Will’s face as he pulls back just enough to sit up.

The click of the bottle seems almost too loud, jarring when all that’s been between them for what feels like hours is breath and skin and sweat. He warms the slick fluid between his fingers before sliding his clean hand against Will’s thigh, up under his knee to spread him just a little further open.

This time, the slide is easier, Will already relaxed and pliant from what Hannibal’s tongue had done to him. It seems almost a formality to stretch him at all, but… Hannibal will admit that watching the tiny jerks of Will’s exhausted body as he caresses just beside his prostate is something he could watch forever.

“Will,” he murmurs, sliding his hand over himself now, twice, just to be enough. “Look at me.”

His eyes open, having drifted lazily closed as he rocked feline and pleased at the curl of fingers inside of him, lips parted just enough to allow soft vocal sighs to pass in response. Brazen, debauched, painfully lovely - flushed across all the heights of his bare skin and shivering exquisitely at the sweat drying on him. He lifts a hand to Hannibal’s cheek and lets his thumb drift over his mouth, tracing against the curve of his lips, the sharpness of his teeth.

Fearless.

Their eyes meet, Will’s heavy-lidded and languorous, back arching suddenly upward, the length of his body driving itself against Hannibal as he pushes his fingers back through Hannibal’s hair, gripping firmly to tug him into a more pleasing position, their bodies mirrored.

“Hannibal.” Scarcely more than a whisper, but with it, awareness. No titles, no pretence, no divide. A different name than usually spoken, a different voice rendered rough with newness, as though speaking this name for the first time.

He smiles, and for a brief moment it looks utterly predatory. Then he arches his shoulders, ducks his head, and kisses Will as he lines up and pushes in.

This slide is easy, and Hannibal forgoes the potential for gentleness just to feel the harsh breath it pushes out of Will to press in fully, spreading his thighs with the motion. He groans softly, the pressure perfect, hot, and for a moment he can barely move, barely blink himself back to being present before Will squeezes around him, shifts in discomfort or pleasure or both mingled together so closely he can no longer tell.

And that’s what it takes. The final push to bring Hannibal’s blood hot, his heart hammering faster. One hand slides up to grab Will’s hair, tug his head back until he’s bent off the bed, just his shoulders and hips in contact with the sheets. He bites, hard, enough to draw a bruise, enough to draw a struggle before Will shows he has claws and uses them.

When he moves, it isn’t gentle, it isn’t soft or tender, not now. It’s possession of the barest sort, animalistic and brutal, and when he kisses Will again, the other wraps his legs around his hips and presses down to every thrust, bites as hard against Hannibal when his teeth are free to as the other had. Fingers drawing red marks over Hannibal’s back, Hannibal’s hands pushing bruises into Will’s thighs where he holds him spread.

He ducks his head to rest against Will’s collarbone, hand still in his hair but no longer able to hold Will bent. He sets his teeth to Will’s collarbone and tugs Will so close against him it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Then he shallows his thrusts, turns Will just so to feel him jerk at the white-hot pleasure that flares through him. Over and over, again and again and again until Will is near-convulsing under him, voice free, loud, run ragged.

Will snarls gasping beneath Hannibal’s teeth, an inky black miasma gripping him. The last of the fight left in him, that self-same instinct that hours before rained death, the same hand that brought down savage destruction against another now snares Hannibal by the throat and claws sharp at the soft skin there. Fierce resistance as his fingers clench harshly beneath Hannibal’s chin, even as Will’s body bridges and pulls tight in acceptance of the pressure driving hard into him.

Hannibal enters him smoothly, but every surge of his hips draws a rough cry unrestrained, tearing Will apart at seams already frayed - too deep, too wide, no longer the thoughtful exploration of their first time together on the floor of Hannibal’s office. He demands more of Will now, takes more, claims more - expectations raised without a doubt that Will can not only meet but surpass them.

_Remarkable boy._

Will fights, bucking his body against the one mounted atop him, tightening around his length as he digs his heel in and cinches his thighs over Hannibal’s hips to trap him there. Will tries to usurp him, tries to push him off, over, to reclaim his position on top but Hannibal holds him easily down and Will bites into Hannibal’s shoulder instead, piercing skin and tasting a trickle of iron-hot blood against his tongue.

Running his tongue along his teeth, scarlet-stained and sharp, Will delights in the taste and in the knowledge that one can’t be pried from the other without both being destroyed. He smiles a slow kiss against the reddened mark he’s left, knowing that for as deep as Hannibal has driven into him, he’s equally deep inside Hannibal. Inextricably intertwined, joined beyond bodies, beyond reason.

They are as wolves, snapping and tearing at each other in vicious play that to any but themselves would appear as violence incarnate. But when Hannibal bares his teeth in a grin and rips Will’s grip from his throat to pin his wrist above his head, their fingers lace, holding fast.

And with the release of a sigh like laughter, the fight ceases, the thrashing turning to quick undulations Will can’t control, snarling turned to panting and whimpers and pleas. Hannibal twists, enough to allow his free hand between them, to grip Will, feel his cock throbbing and dripping with need.

It doesn't take much. Will’s body already pushed near its limits of endurance and pleasure, the sensations overwhelming him and he breaks, a stuttered gasp against Hannibal's throat when he leans close enough over him, body shuddering, lips drawn in a smile that looks human again.

It's enough.

For Hannibal to brace against the headboard, taking Will’s hand with him, to go still, muscles taut in ecstasy, to moan Will’s name against him.

He curls his arm above Will’s head, fingers languid now, thumb soothing gentle motions over Will’s knuckles - skin ragged with damage but not bleeding again - as he catches his breath, draws his nose alongside Will’s in the closest approximation of a kiss either can manage.

The ache in his shoulder is secondary, the tightness of his back that will manifest into an ache if he doesn't stretch it free is secondary, the mess - from the dried blood, the sweat, their exertions - is secondary. The only thing that matters, that feels real and whole and achingly perfect is the man now barely conscious in his arms.

_I want this to mean something._

What it means isn’t clear, but what it means doesn’t matter.

It means.

It’s enough.

Trembling with exhaustion, Will turns towards Hannibal and draws desperately near, pulling himself up along the length of Hannibal’s body still draped over his own. He wants to look, to see Hannibal gentled and satisfied above him, but his eyes are heavy and even the thought of reopening them seems impossible, earning a wordless grumble of protest at the weight of his own fatigue. Finding the sheet beneath them, Will grimaces and pulls it up over his shoulders, fever-flushed as the chill air prickles his skin.

Will’s tucks his face against Hannibal’s neck when he rolls against him, onto their sides, to bury himself against Hannibal’s shoulder and wrap an arm over his waist, the other coming to rest between them, fingers tangling sleepily in Hannibal’s chest hair, soft and sweat-damp. Curled alongside a lion, savage strength and claws and teeth evolved to render carnage - a lion that stretches and eases and purrs praise against him rather than the slaughter it assuredly offers all others. Skin on skin, pulse against pulse - bared, nothing left between them.

_Here. Now. You._

Lost and found in the feel of Hannibal’s heart beneath his hand, slowing patient and steady. Lost and found in the quiet sound that escapes him as Hannibal’s lips graze his forehead.

Will’s breath hitches under another shiver, and he sleeps without dreaming.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Will looks broken, flushed and trembling, hips shifting in gentle undulations against the counter as he seeks friction and heat and all the things Hannibal wants to give him but makes him wait for._
> 
> _Debauched is a wonderful look on Will Graham._
> 
> Fluffy morning after. With a side of sex.

By late afternoon, the sun has grown heavy and warm, barely penetrating the thick curtains that cover the bedroom windows and trail to the floor in puddles of fabric. There are no cellos over the hidden speakers, soft and lilting as they echo through old halls and churches that the house tries to emulate by design or mistake. There is just quiet. The gentle sound of breathing from two bodies laid bare and clean on bunched sheets.

Will aches. A bone-deep kind of hurt that he tries to ease with a lazy stretch, fingers and arms and legs and toes, before settling into the mattress again. He grinds a fist against his eye, vision clearing enough that he can study the suit of armor watching over them.

His breath stills, remembering the burn of carpet against his hands when he pinned Hannibal down on the stairs with the armor above. The lingering strain of sensation in the base of his spine echoes as though in response and he buries his face in the pillow, unwilling yet to let his mind start working backwards from there. Letting the freshest memories - the ones that left bruises and bites and warmth and tenderness pressed into his skin - override those that came before it.

He has to piss. Desperately. A soft note of dismay is buried muffled in the pillow before Will pushes upward, arms weak from overuse and then disuse, unmoving for more hours than he's sure of. His feet brush the carpet and he shivers at the cold air and the openness of being naked in someone else's room.

In this room. In particular.

He steals a furtive look back over his shoulder at the prone shape of Hannibal, streaked with afternoon gold where the drapes aren't fully closed, a sheet wrapped just loose across his hips. Artfully arranged, even in sleep.

Will worries his lip for a moment and before he can fully consider that maybe he's not the most exposed one in the room right now, painful pressure drives him to stand, a little dizzy, to find the bathroom.

He traces a line along the wall as he goes, sleepily observant of the enormous bathroom with a shower and a tub and glossy marble and big red towels and easily three times the size of his own little bathroom in Wolf Trap. It's not until he's finished - groaning heartfelt relief - and goes to wash his hands that he sees himself in the extensive mirror.

Dark circles gather like storm clouds beneath his eyes, his features drawn and pale, but clean. He sighs a quiet gratitude for a tidying he doesn't remember, wiping clear the darkness that clung to his face and arms. Bruises litter his skin like pale purple flowers blooming livid along his neck, his ribs, his thighs, he can feel, shifting uncomfortably in his own body. He looks away from himself, dries his hands on a towel that costs more than all the ones he's ever owned, and tries to hang it again with as much care as he can muster, vaguely aware that it’s not as tidy as it was before.

He casts about for clothes, hoping to see anything laid out obviously for him, and shivers again when he doesn't see any. The promise of warmth in the bed, of resting until he can move without grimacing, is enticing, and he slowly slides back beneath the sheets, clumsily careful to not move too much.

Will worries his lip again as he tucks his hands beneath the sheets and watches the even breath of the man next to him. He swallows down guilt and feels his brows draw in. Not yet. It’s too early to think, to start abrading himself, to dwell and anguish and hurt.

There will be time enough for that later.

And so he scoots a little closer to Hannibal, just a little, to feel his breath pool warm against Hannibal's shoulder, closing his eyes to feel the heat of him, without touching. Another shiver, but not from cold.

Hannibal starts to wake only when he feels Will shift against him, back in bed. His eyes are heavy, sleep not having come until perhaps an hour before - by his own choice but regardless - and he doesn’t open them. Allows himself to feel the warmth and weight of the body at his side, hear the soft sounds Will makes as his body comes to terms with being conscious.

No shaking here, no jolting up from a nightmare in a cold sweat with a heartbeat too fast to measure. He moves languid, and Hannibal imagines he curls his arm under his head, turns to rest on his stomach and brings his other to rest up by his face.

If he opened his eyes now to see Will’s, they’d be pale, blue-green again. Pupils wide only to accommodate for the relative darkness of the room.

He continues the pretence of slumber for a few moments longer, allowing Will to explore his surroundings, come to terms with the evening previous, remember. But his lips twitch in a smile when he feels Will’s breath against his shoulder.

He hums, a soft acknowledgement, a promise to wake up shortly if he’s allowed the time. He stretches one arm out, enough to drape over Will’s shoulder, pull him closer and bend his elbow to rest just down his back. He draws his curled fingers lightly just between Will’s shoulders, his own hand warmer than the cool skin already exposed to the air.

Hannibal feels Will shiver, that same involuntary movement that speaks more of doubt than anything else, and he brings his hand up higher, to stroke against the back of Will’s head, a gentle carding through the hair there, to reassure him.

When Hannibal finally opens his eyes, he sees Will’s instantly snap to him, attentive, watching him wide and awake and aware. And he has to smile, because he was right about what color they would be.

“You’re awake.” he murmurs, voice heavy with a different sort of roughness than the one that had weighted his words the night before. This one speaks of little sleep and soft awakenings. He rolls his shoulders, just once, and the motion brings Will closer against him. He slides one leg between Will’s and sighs, opening his eyes further.

Armor aside. Masks away.

Will allows himself to be drawn close, eyes closing as Hannibal works his hand through his curls, stretching them between his fingers and letting them softly recoil. He draws a breath and tucks his head beneath Hannibal's chin, mouth warm against the hollow of his throat, his own fingertips tracing absent circles over the older man’s chest.

Drinking in his warmth, but not as he did the night before - with dire desperation to feel something, anything alive against him - but a gentler thirst, sating himself with each breath he feels hot against the skin beneath his mouth.

"Barely," he murmurs, hoarsely, unsure of what to say here, like this, between them. "I had to use the bathroom."

He stifles a sigh at himself, swallowing it down as color draws across his cheeks, and keeps his eyes closed. It's too much right now to see Hannibal like this, too many questions that beg his attention, nagging at his skin like insects. He shifts, to dislodge the feeling, and wraps his leg back around Hannibal's to pull a little closer.

Maybe if there's no space between them, there won't be room for questions either. They'll smother them out under their hands and mouths, steal the breath needed to ask them by passing it between their lips instead.

"I used your towel," he continues, soft-voiced and awkward and wary of all the unfamiliar territory he finds himself a part of. "I hung it back up again."

 _Christ,_ he thinks, willing himself to stop talking.

“I’m sure the towel appreciated it.” Hannibal replies, smile tilting his lips up as he feels Will try to squirm his way a status quo ante.

He draws his hand through Will’s hair more, further up to cup the back of his head and hold him warm and soft against him. He wants to ask what Will is so afraid of. If he worries that the light will burn away what tenuous trust they had gained the night before, what secrets now softened between them.

He would find the worry amusing if he hadn’t spent hours, himself, considering similar things.

They are certainly beyond just having conversations now. Beyond the pretence of therapy, beyond the pretence of intentions.

He unfolds his other arm from where it had rested under his head and insinuates it between the soft sheets and Will’s shoulder, letting his hand splay low over his back, fingertips just skimming the base of his spine, seeping warmth into the skin that is just a shade cooler than his own.

Hannibal feels Will tense, just a little, and ducks his head to nuzzle against his hair. He can smell blood from the night before, clean sweat that held no spice of fever, and under it all the remnants of the awful aftershave, the organic smell of dogs.

He thinks absently of how happy the pack was to see him that morning when he’d unlocked the door with Will’s key to feed them, to tape plastic to the shattered window, to clean the stain of blood from the floorboards and the carpet it had reached. He thinks but doesn’t linger, it tugs at something within him he can’t quite let free.

A tension plucks soft between them, a single note felt more than seen or heard, drawing a twitch beneath Hannibal's fingers as it hangs in the air. Will isn't sure what caused it, content to assume it was himself, wise enough not to ask and have it confirmed.

Shifting to allow Hannibal's arm around him, Will braces against him and his gaze catches on the discolorations like shadows across his hand, the stiffness in his fingers, a stark reminder splayed unavoidable in front of him. Still he tries in quiet desperation, and slides his hand back between their bodies, as though out of sight, out of mind had ever worked for him before.

Longing for just an hour. A few minutes. Even a moment before it all comes back.

Hannibal's hand rubs a slow line up over his bare skin, firm against his back, and Will relaxes into it, mouth warm when it catches just beneath Hannibal's jaw. Seeking familiarity, comfort, anything he can follow to take him back out of himself, not by setting his imagination racing with brutality but to guide him gently out of the dark recesses that beg his attention at all turns. To illuminate in golden afternoon light the corners of his mind where insatiable voices call to him, where images burn themselves into him like firebrands.

Will sighs as Hannibal's lips brush against his brow, a new fever searing flush and warm against his skin, as equally capable of immolating memories and making space for new growth. A controlled burn.

His body aches intense and sharp as Hannibal adjusts him closer, the brief pain drawing him back from the shadows, and he makes a small sound of dissent before settling in again.

“I feel like I got hit by a truck,” he mutters, his voice muffled against Hannibal’s skin, no longer carefully selecting each word in advance but simply breathing them free, inelegant and familiar and thick with sleep.

“Your body exhausted itself,” Hannibal tells him, waiting until he can feel the beat of Will’s heart slow back to a semblance of his resting pace before pulling back enough to rest on his back, adjusting Will to lie against him.

“You haven’t allowed it rest. Running on adrenaline. Anger. Fear.” _the need for a reckoning._

He keeps the gentle stroking of his hand over Will’s back, slides the pads of his fingers over the jutting hipbone he can reach, caressing then pulling away. Will is very thin when he’s not hiding under baggy shirts and corduroys.

He wonders how Will would respond to dinner so soon after being the provider of it.

He supposes, for a night, he can settle on something simple. Something Will’s stomach can endure without incident.

Hannibal draws his nails lightly over the skin, not even enough to leave marks, just enough to feel and cause a pleasant shiver to run up Will’s body, and then slowly extricates himself from the pliant limbs around him.

“What would you prefer for dinner?” he asks, bending to retrieve some soft sleep pants, the sweater that Will had disregarded the day before, before pulling open a drawer in one of the two dressers to retrieve a pair of pants for Will as well.

Will huffs a laugh against his arm, rolling onto his back again as Hannibal slides out of bed.

"Coffee," he responds ruefully, turning again onto his stomach, trying to ease the soreness. He folds his arms beneath the pillow and watches Hannibal, a little blurred without glasses, as he sifts thoughtfully through the drawers of clothes.

A pang of regret snares sharp at the distance between them and Will bites back an urge to ask him to come back, to draw him close and press together again and again.

If they never leave this bed, they'll never have to think about all of this, talk about it, define it beyond what it is right now, in this particular moment, in this particular context. Will won't have to worry about going back to work, about when or how they'll see each other, or how he'll react when they do. He won't have to concern himself with what any of it means for either of them.

If they never leave this bed, they can slowly forget the world outside this here, this now.

A faint smile comes and goes, and Will drops his feet onto the floor, grasping the pants offered to him and standing to tug them over his hips. He looks for a shirt but doesn't see one offered, and decides his bruises are too fresh to worry about it right now anyway, following Hannibal a few steps behind.

Maybe instead, Will considers, maybe if he can pretend hard enough that this is normal, eventually he won't have to pretend anymore.

His legs are stiff and he sighs, wincing, and tries not to notice where he tackled Hannibal to the stairs to climb atop him, instead taking in the armor, the paintings, the rich colors and lush fabrics fused into a reflection of Hannibal himself, private areas he's never seen before but could have imagined easily enough, a particular tone to the environment - Hannibal as a place.

The kitchen tiles are cold beneath Will's feet and he frowns at the ground as though to warm it, to no avail. He scans for the coffee maker, catching himself as he goes to lean against the spotless counter and instead pushing a hand back through his hair.

“I should,” he pauses, swallows, a constriction of reluctance and guilt as he sees the time. “I should probably - go, after coffee. The dogs-”

“-were fed this morning.” Hannibal finishes for him, following him into the kitchen. “And allowed their morning run for the time it took me to remove the glass from your bed.”

Hannibal opens the pantry, retrieving a folded paper bag that smells enticingly of coffee Will can’t usually afford, before setting about getting the coffee maker warmed up.

“I hope you don’t mind the intrusion.”

He watches Will attempt to come to terms with the news and smiles, turning away to grind the coffee to give him his space, just as much as to avoid his own temptation of seeing Will in - Hannibal’s - loose clothing, wearing his bruises like badges of honor in his kitchen.

He looks like a meal.

No.

Now simply a feast for Hannibal’s senses, reliving and remembering every tremble and shift and shudder that body could make under the gentlest of touches.

Hannibal takes a breath, masks it as savoring the smell of the coffee, now ground, and smiles.

Will pauses in his nervous gestures, hand briefly frozen in his hair. He drops it to his side, brows knitting.

"You went to my house?" A held breath and his lower lip caught, chewed between his teeth. Feet padding soft against the floor as he draws nearer, slow steps.

"You did all that? The mess? My dogs?"

Curious silence, until - before he can contemplate it or mull over it or hold it in - Will laughs. Genuine and sudden and sweet, as though surprised by his own reaction.

Surprised more so by Hannibal.

Maybe he won't have to pretend so hard after all, Will considers, unrestrained affection unwinding at the gesture, thoughtful to a degree that Will wouldn't expect anyone to provide to him.

"Thank you," Will offers after a few long beats, still with a look of puzzlement, but also a smile crooked and soft that lingers longer than intended. Will draws up close behind Hannibal, arms sliding around him with only the barest hesitation, to pull himself close against Hannibal's back and nuzzle against the curve of his neck. Fingers spreading over the scarlet sweater. Letting his weight lean into him. Catching warmth between them.

"Then maybe I don't need to go yet," he murmurs, a suggestion and a question all at once, muffled against Hannibal's shoulder.

Hannibal hums, finds that this time he just barely refrains from stiffening, unused to affection so freely offered. Alana would touch him, gentle fingers, presses of lips, bending her body to his, yet from Will the gestures are so much more telling. The trust offered is immense, stepping so close to the person Will had spent so long antagonising, had tried to have killed.

It’s a strange duality, for a moment, that affection and memory of its opposite. But Hannibal leans back against Will, turns his head at the soft words and smiles.

“Maybe.” he answers.

Today both predators can lie still. Lick each other’s wounds.

He doesn’t turn in Will’s hold, just rests against him, allowing the exhaustion weighing his limbs to seep into him a moment before licking his lips and sighing softly. He brings a hand to rest against Will’s arms where they hold him comfortably, strokes a thumb over his pulse.

For a brief moment longer, they stay, then Will steps back, heartbeat briefly spiking. The closeness still unusual, still foreign to him. Hannibal goes about setting the coffee to brew without comment, turns to watch Will once the process is out of his hands.

Will had painted quite the picture walking down the stairs in front of him, all loose limbs and barely restrained limp. Hannibal wonders if the smell of his skin will be softened by the hot water of a shared shower. If the taste of his need will be soothed.

He watches Will with a barely restrained hunger, before turning to set the first glass mug to fill, the more strong coffee for Will first.

“Would you, perhaps, then, join me for supper?” he asks, passing the glass over, fingers brushing Will’s tip to tip when he takes it from him. “Simple. Casual.”

“Can you do simple?” Will’s lips tilt as he cradles the coffee, and the corners of Hannibal’s eyes crinkle in a smile.

“It will be elegant, Will, but not extravagant. Perhaps olive tapenade. Hand-rolled pasta with chilli and anise.” he smiles fully then, a warm expression, and bends to set the second cup to fill, careful with the machine in front of him, as he always is.

There’s no meat in the recipe, at least as Hannibal recites it now, a question unasked but answered. Will allows a twinge of a smile at his own transparency.

“How could I say no?”

Will carries himself a safe distance away, a distance that’s easier to understand for now, no hesitance in having his back to Hannibal, scars and all, not in temptation or challenge but with a knowledge that their threat to each other is well past the physical.

He lowers himself stiffly to sit at the counter and wraps the mug in both hands, elbows braced against the cold granite, to watch the steam rise out of the dark coffee in pale tendrils of heat. Familiarity here, as he breathes it in, even if the particular taste is new.

“This is good,” Will murmurs, voice still soft around the edges with sleep, and something like contentment.

He always drinks his coffee black and wonders how Hannibal has always known.

Glancing back at the older man from beneath his hair, Will takes in a measure of movement and posture and tension before realizing he does it, an unconscious habit that gathers gestures and implications. He notes the first strains of a sleepless night. Quiet aches. Eagerness and caution roughly equal to his own.

Satisfied enough by what he sees, Will looks back into the mug.

 _Who are you?_ he wants to ask, but he knows more answers to that question than he wishes he did.

 _Why are you?_ he wants to ask instead, but he swallows it with another sip.

Will releases his grip on the coffee, feeling the warmth stir life into his tired limbs, and instead picks at his knuckles, prying at a scab freshly formed over new skin.

“They must have been happy to see you.”

Swallowing, Hannibal nods, thinks back to the wagging tails and soft whines of the creatures Will surrounds himself with; a fitting pack for a predator, and yet there had been no threat towards him, no raised hackles or fear. Just cold noses and warm tongues.

_They remember a hand that fed them._

"Your smallest slept," he adds, "but the rest kept quiet company."

Hannibal regards the soft slope of Will’s shoulders, notes the fondness in his tone, for the dogs or for himself he is unsure. He watches Will take another sip of the rich liquid and mirrors, curling his lips similarly around the taste as he knows Will’s do. He makes a soft, discontented sound when Will picks at his skin.

"You just won't let it heal," and it's a chastisement as much as a gentle observation before he steps closer to stand behind Will, takes his hand and turns it palm-up, soft and vulnerable, and kisses the center of it. It’s hot from the mug whereas the tips of Will’s fingers are cooler, curling softly to brush Hannibal’s face as he splays his own hand over the back of Will’s to cover the damage.

"Leave it be," he says.

 _Remember your scars,_ he thinks _, and who gave them to you._

_Remember also who soothed the wounds._

A frown of faint concern, quiet guilt snaring when Will speaks. "He got hurt last night." A pause, reconsidering. "Randall Tier hurt him."

Reopening old wounds, again and again, until they scar.

"He'll be okay," Will says, in assurance to himself more than anything. "It looked worse than it was."

His fingers curl and extend, back and forth against Hannibal's cheek, and he settles slowly into him, bare shoulders slumped back against Hannibal's chest. Sliding his hand around his neck, to tug him close to Will's own, tilting his head to allow the nearness.

Will knows he should be more alarmed than he feels, breath timed into the pace he feels slow and easy against his back. Hannibal in his home, without him. Why he was there. His own hand the cause of the destruction left behind.

Hands that now surround him, soft against his stomach, wrapping firm to pull him close.

Heat moves across Will's cheeks, fingers extending to brush against the mug again, to trace its lines and draw the warmth from it. Little flutters of movement normally restrained in a motionless grip against the cold arms of the therapy chair, now let free.

"I should probably take a shower," Will mutters, rueful and shy as Hannibal's mouth presses over his pulse, a quick pleasure tensing in his stomach.

A hum vibrates against the vulnerable skin of Will’s wrist, no tone in particular to suggest Hannibal feels one way or another about it, but he doesn’t step back to let Will up. He laces their fingers and gently turns Will’s hand to present the wrist more, draws his lips lightly down the soft skin to bring them together in a kiss at the inside of his elbow.

He had washed Will, meticulous and gentle, and Will hadn’t stirred. Hannibal had bent his pliant limbs gently, met no resistance and found a desperate cold setting in his chest with the fact.

Will _was_ resistance. He was power and life and coiled energy that had nowhere to go.

Even now, with the gentle touches, beneath him, Will trembles, he takes soft breaths with increasing frequency. He has the capacity to jerk away, to pull Hannibal closer to part his lips and moan.

And that he does do, when Hannibal sucks another mark into the pale skin of his arm, and Hannibal replies with a soft one of his own.

 _No_ , he decides, _just like this. Never still._

"Maybe." Hannibal replies, an odd playfulness fringing the word, reminding Will of the last time he had answered this way and what to. Then he ducks his head to sigh against Will’s shoulder, to bring his lips to his skin only where it joins the neck in a delicate curve.

Will shivers, pinpricks over his skin, as Hannibal's mouth brushes over the scar on his shoulder, now faded. A knife plunged through bone and muscle. He shifts, uneasy, but calms again as Hannibal moves to his neck instead.

He doesn't remember washing off the aftermath stuck dried against his skin, substances drawn from acts of instinct and absolute release. Will feels it in his hair, still, curls stiff where blood-dark hands ran through them, but lets the seeking pressure of Hannibal's mouth on his throat distract him.

Relinquishing control to the fever that blooms across his cheeks.

Nervous fingers come to rest against Hannibal's wrists, arms surrounding him, and Will's thumb brushes soft over the long scar there - his by proxy, perhaps, but still his. He rubs mildly at it, as though it could be erased, as though it might be suddenly repaired through this new accord between them.

They each wear each others' wounds now, only some of them visible.

Will turns, careful not to unsettle the arms from around him, to face Hannibal instead, all pretensions of their stone-faced therapy fading like the marks on their skin as he leans close, lips touching Hannibal's neck, just below his jaw, so soft that his breath is felt more than his mouth.

"You haven't slept," he notes, hesitant to let himself sound as gentle as the warm undulations in his chest make him feel.

Hannibal hums, smiles.

"No."

It hardly matters now, the hours he had spent in the basement alone, the hours to drive to Wolf Trap and render Will’s home livable again, the last minute appointment with the dry cleaner he prefers to have Will’s coat clean by morning...

It doesn't matter. Sleep he can sate himself with, gorge on, with Will sighing soft breaths against his neck. Later.

He draws his hands from around Will’s frame to rest on either side of his face, leans in to kiss him, taste the bitterness of the coffee on his tongue when Will sighs and allows him in. And it's this pliancy, this willing, real, warm, breathing pliancy that still sets Will’s pulse to flutter under Hannibal’s fingers, that draws a groan from him, has him stepping closer, near-pinning Will to the counter.

The hunger uncoils sinuous from the night before, sliding through Hannibal’s chest, his limbs, turning his motions cat-like, just subtly dangerous.

Will breathes a laugh, quiet and surprised, as Hannibal pushes between his thighs and he feels the counter press against his back. Trailing fingers down the side of Hannibal's face, along his jaw, fingertips pressed to feel it work as their tongues brush.

He wonders at the hunger, rather than fearing it. Wonders if that's wise, but slides his arm around Hannibal's neck and pulls him closer anyway.

Arching back beneath him, curving with a limberness that his muscle memory has started to find without thought to cloud it - how Hannibal usually bends him with fingers in his hair, now bent with no need for instruction.

Will's curiosity is evident in the exploration of Hannibal's face beneath his fingers. He trails a touch along his cheekbone, across his brow, down his nose to finally rest his palm against Hannibal's cheek.

A face he knew well before, known better now.

"Again?" Will asks, an amused whisper when they part enough to breathe.

Hannibal just smiles, kisses his answer back against Will’s lips with clear intent and moves his hands to rest just above the waistline of his pants as he steps closer.

Again.

He doesn’t question Will’s desire for it, it’s expressed plain enough by his body if not by his words, but there is no struggle in him, absolutely nothing about the way he arches and tilts his head to suggest this is in any way under duress.

With a pleased growl, a low note deep in Hannibal’s chest, he slides his hands lower still, just enough to grasp Will to him and hoist him onto the counter he leans against. It’s a quick motion, sudden, and as Hannibal straightens to keep facing Will even when their kiss breaks on a soft sound of surprise, he feels Will spread his legs to accommodate.

Will grips the edge of the counter to steady himself before he leans into the kiss and loops his arms over Hannibal's shoulders. A smile catches the corner of his mouth, inordinately pleased by this change of position, and he lets it show with a satisfied little sound.

It's quiet now, the kitchen and the house and inside his own head. Quiet but for the rumbles that Hannibal makes, that twist Will's stomach into eager knots. Quiet but for the quickened breath that leaves Will as he feels Hannibal moving against him.

He slides a leg up and hooks it over Hannibal's hip to move against him there, too, positively coy as he arcs himself forward while tightening his thighs, intensely charmed by the desire he feels emanating over him each time their hips press together.

He's learning, with practice.

It’s endearing, the change in Will, welcome and pleasing. Hannibal allows him the control for a moment, stepping closer as he’s pulled, tilting his head when Will’s lips seek lower. He sets his hands on either side of Will’s hips where he sits, feeling the cold granite seep the warmth from his hands.

He almost pities Will the position.

Something twists in Hannibal, a strange longing he’d buried for years, in the snows of a winter he only ever sees in the darkest of dreams and never brings to light. A memory of a connection to another human being that tethers so strongly he can’t see it cut. Can’t imagine it. Doesn’t want to.

He steps back, when prompted, and tugs the sweater over his head, for a moment ignoring the messiness of tossing it to the floor in favor of stepping close enough to Will to bend him back, catch the hiss against his lips at the cold that touches skin.

Hannibal feels Will still beneath him, for just a moment, as his eyes find the harsh mark he’d left on Hannibal’s shoulder and remember, bring warm fingers up to ghost just above it.

 _Yes_ , Hannibal’s mind purrs, _you did this._

“Yours.” he murmurs, smiling against Will’s parted lips as the other gasps, before he straightens, guides his hands parallel down Will’s sides to pull him closer so his hips hang just over the edge of the counter. He tucks his thumbs under the loose elastic and slides the pants off just enough for Will to realize the intention.

Then he ducks his head and takes the head of his cock between his lips.

_His._

Will draws a sharp breath at the sudden heat, that much stronger for the cold counter against his skin. His back bridges and a guttural groan loosens itself as his eyes flutter closed.

"Fuck," a hushed gasp as he feels Hannibal's lips wrap a little lower around his hardening length, fingers tightening, holding fast to the edge of the counter on which he precariously rests.

He knows Hannibal's watching him without needing to look, feels the shadow of his amusement pass over, and Will blushes furiously at the sensation, embarrassed and delighted and not entirely in control of himself. Not at all, if he's honest.

Something he has done before, finally, but it's a cold comfort akin to the granite pressed to his flushed skin. Never like this, never displayed before such rapt attention. Self-conscious about what's being done to him, more self-conscious about how enormously he's enjoying it.

"You - you don't," Will insists with an unsteady stammer, "you don't have to -"

It’s utterly gratifying to steal Will’s voice. To take it, manipulate it to twitch, just so until it’s barely his, lilted and warm.

Hannibal’s fingers work the soft fabric far enough for gravity to take it to the floor. He slides his arms under Will’s knees to support them, arches his back to lean closer so his fingers can skim the trembling muscles of Will’s stomach as he takes him deeper.

Soft, barely-felt shudders, sounds he’s pulling from Will like a musician pulls sound from his instrument, a coaxing, gentle thing. He can feel Will’s hands curl harder around the edge of the counter, and hums, hands splaying to hold Will down as he does it again.

Will is exquisite in his pleasure, in the utter rapture that comes with it. His entire self devoted to feeling every motion, every tug and press and murmur against him. He spreads his legs and bends, back arched and neck long, pulse thudding under the skin as he keeps his jaw locked in a vain attempt to keep quiet.

Hannibal raises his eyes, enough to see Will struggle with himself, to watch him swallow quickly, hiss breaths between his teeth. In a brief, harsh motion, Hannibal leaves red marks against Will’s side, just enough to catch his attention, to ground him in the pain that turns to pleasure and melds into it. When he has Will’s eyes on him, wide and bright and so blue against the flush that warms his face, he narrows his own, draws the flat of his tongue rough along the underside of his cock, and takes Will deep enough to feel at the back of his throat.

Will's lips part in sympathy as he watches, mouth slack and breath bursting short and eager, until he feels that pressure, the friction against the back of Hannibal's throat, and his eyes roll closed again with a desperate groan. He arches hard to seek it again, hips rolling in a wave that curls his spine until he's nearly off the counter.

When his eyes open there, bridged beneath the firm hand scratching soft over his stomach, he notices that it's snowing outside, upside down from the position he's in. Running a hand along the side of his face, Will laughs, breathless and delighted.

It seems appropriate, somehow.

He bucks again, shivers shooting sharp over his skin at the feel of Hannibal's tongue pressed fast against him, and relinquishes the steadying grip on the counter to run his fingers instead through Hannibal's hair, nails curling against his scalp. Will's other hand splays over the chilly countertop, and when he feels Hannibal's lips draw around him, a languid suck against his sensitive skin, he jerks hard and topples the mug forgotten beside him, spilling lukewarm coffee.

"Shit," Will breathes, before a moan steals that, too.

He only ever swears when he's like this, although he's not sure he's ever really been like this, euphoric with the kind of abandon that only absolute adoration can bring. His voice cracks when he speaks, pleading soft between panting breaths.

"Would you," he swallows hard, unable to bring himself to look at Hannibal again at risk of falling wholly undone. "Like before?"

Hannibal pulls back slowly, makes the effort for Will to feel every single gentle motion before he looks up, panting breaths that feel cold against Will’s damp skin, watching the way he shivers from it - or perhaps from the sensations that overwhelm him.

How quickly one grows accustomed to pleasure, he thinks, and how quickly it becomes difficult to deny it.

Will looks broken, flushed and trembling, hips shifting in gentle undulations against the counter as he seeks friction and heat and all the things Hannibal wants to give him but makes him wait for.

Debauched is a wonderful look on Will Graham.

Hannibal ducks his head to press hot open-mouthed kisses to Will’s thigh, sliding his hands down to pull him closer still, spread him that little bit wider with his thumbs against the warm dip of muscle near his groin.

He pushes his face gently against the hot skin, breathing in everything that Will Graham is, when he’s not hiding behind scents and shadows and fears, bites just lightly, a nip to send a jolt through Will’s body. Then he leans further in, breathes against the sensitive skin, and draws his tongue velvet-rough against Will.

An explosive shudder ricochets down the length of Will's body and it's Hannibal's name he begs this time, peppered with curses, voice quaking in a way that would be fragile if it weren't already broken. He clenches his hand hard in Hannibal's hair, body contorting in an eager squirm to press against his mouth again.

"More," he insists, a high hopeful note through the gasps. A leg draws up alongside Hannibal's face when he obliges, the searing soft skin of Will's thigh pressed fast against the older man's cheek before he hooks it over his shoulder instead.

Finally loosening the handful of hair he's fisted between his fingers, Will's hand drops shaking to Hannibal's shoulder instead. A flicker of memory, and he lets his fingers press just hard enough against the angry mark he left the night before, over the bruise and red lines drawn by his own teeth. He doesn't remember it, not clearly, but it's his - all of this, his - and a profound pleasure coils tightly in him.

It's as new for Will as everything else, this sense of power, asking and receiving, demanding and sated.

And it all falls apart with a whimper when Hannibal's hands slide beneath him, to pull him nearly off the counter and forcing Will onto his shoulders with a yelp. His eyes open wide at the sharp movement, a halo of blue around black pupils, flustered and fiercely flushed.

This Will, this demanding, hungry, feline creature under him makes Hannibal’s heart spike on a double beat. He moans, the sound translating through the sensitive skin and sending Will’s back rigid for a moment in ecstasy.

Hannibal watches him valiantly try to keep his eyes open, to look, see, watches him fail, draw his lip between his teeth, release it again on a groan, writhe and shudder and twist in his hands.

Will’s cock rests hard against his stomach, dark and wet and trailing translucent streaks against the skin there. He’s drawn up tight, coiled like a spring, like a creature in wait for a kill. Wild and uncontrollable and still perfectly, utterly tamed to Hannibal’s hand. He stretches the skin, pulls Will a fraction wider for his tongue and is rewarded with an utterly helpless howl that falls shaking into the cool empty area of the kitchen.

“Please -” Will grits his teeth on a hiss and his eyes close tight, toes curling, turned away, trying to hold himself together. Hannibal doesn’t relent, doesn’t slow, he watches. He watches every emotion and desire and flush write itself over Will’s face like the most precious thing.

He remembers.

He doesn’t need to touch Will. All he does is hum again, warm, pleased, between Will’s spread legs.

Will doesn't have time to warn him, doesn't have time to think or to react beyond pure primal response, moaning hard as he feels his release crack through his veins like ice, like embers, like lightning that draws him taut, rigid when slick heat bursts across his stomach. His thighs snap tight with each pulse that pulls itself from him, locking Hannibal hard against his trembling body, until finally, slowly, the moans abate into a lower sound.

Which rises again, weaker this time, when Hannibal presses a lingering, open kiss against his sensitive skin. Another tug of tension and a helpless murmur of Hannibal's name before he goes supple, everything in him falling pliant and soft as snow.

His leg slips off Hannibal's shoulder and he drapes an arm over his own face, radiating heat with every shaky breath.

"Fuck." A final proclamation, twitches and tremors still snapping through him, echoes of the cataclysm that's left him in pieces all across Hannibal's counter.

He feels the coffee cooling against his skin, and huffs a noise of mild dismay.

_Mine._

It’s such a possessive thought, such a strong pull, that Hannibal can do little but arrange Will in some semblance of comfort over the counter before bending to kiss the sweat from his skin. He’s hard, aching against the smooth fabric of his own pants, but all he can think is that the tremors, the harsh breaths, the smile he can taste on the corner of Will’s mouth are all his.

Hannibal pulls back enough to rest his forehead against Will’s collarbone, panting breaths over his chest until his heart slows a little, until he feels Will’s do the same. Then he smiles. Grins. And turns his face to nuzzle against Will’s sternum.

“Oh, Will.”

It’s a sigh, fond, soft, warm in a way only affection can color a tone.

“I fear I must get used to you making a mess of my kitchen.” he tilts his head, watches as Will lets his arm fall back, regards Hannibal with a confused look before snorting a gentle laugh, and Hannibal can’t help but smile.

“And perhaps now,” he adds, “We can take a shower.”

Another smile, catching the corners of Will’s eyes, as his hand finds its way to Hannibal's hair again, letting smooth strands glide between his fingers.

Spent. Pleased. Sleepy again, but not the bone-deep exhaustion Will felt before.

A contentment rather, settling into him, fresh and new.

"You mentioned dinner?" Will notes, brows knitting just a little, a flicker of expectation.

The dry look from Hannibal is enough to draw another grin, before Will leans close to kiss the faint moue from the curve of his lips. Will’s legs are unsteady as he slides down off the counter and as before, he flinches at the cold tile beneath his feet, gathering close to Hannibal to follow him back upstairs.

Coffee was dinner enough.

There must be something going around the Bureau - not unexpected for a few folks to get laid out with the flu in the dead of winter. Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter seem to catch it especially bad, out of their respective offices for an entire week. They're scarcely even able to answer their phones, rough-voiced and curt when they do, before hanging up and rolling back over to the other, remarkably warm despite the cold outside the windows.


End file.
